Classic musicals formed the programme of the opening event of BrynFest, an event that has moved indoors and hundreds of miles south-east of Faenol in north Wales, where the great bass-baritone Bryn Terfel founded it 12 years ago. But it retains its populist stance, and this generous assembly of extracts from Broadway shows was essentially a compendium of the genre's greatest hits.

Terfel has more previous with the genre than most opera singers, including productions of Sweeney Todd at Chicago Lyric Opera and the South Bank as well as CDs of Rodgers & Hammerstein and Alan Jay Lerner standards. But, as this show proved by placing him alongside singers from the West End stage, having a prodigious voice in itself does not win every point. His tendency to envelop the material in sheer sonic grandeur sometimes worked against it, especially when the high level of amplification employed on this occasion was factored in.

With less voice at his disposal, Clive Rowe showed how to bounce the tunes off the text, most engagingly in his duet with Emma Williams, You're the Top from Cole Porter's Kiss Me, Kate, the evening's highpoint of sheer charm; his word-centred approach scored well, too, against Terfel's grander-scaled singing in Brush Up Your Shakespeare.

Julian Ovenden's matinee-idol manner worked a treat in numbers from West Side Story and Carousel, especially given how difficult it is to present bad-boy Billy Bigelow in a tuxedo. Hannah Waddingham's charismatic grandeur, too, proved a considerable asset.

Reading David Benedict's erudite narration, Siân Phillips held the evening together with dignity and warmth, despite some tacky lighting and dry ice. Gareth Valentine's conducting could have done with a mite more rhythmic kick, and the Orchestra of Welsh National Opera didn't need the amplification, either.